


a thousand conversations

by weasleysking



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Billy Hargrove Needs a Hug, Billy Hargrove Redemption, Child Abuse, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Max and Billy being good siblings, Swearing, Whump, they just look out for each other i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-10-01 22:27:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20425019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weasleysking/pseuds/weasleysking
Summary: “I know you don’t want me to see you like this,” she whispered.His fists squeezed together, but he said nothing.“Just let me help you,” she said. “Please.”





	a thousand conversations

**Author's Note:**

> hey gang! i'm so fucking blown away by the responses i've had to my fics. thank you all for such positive comments. love ya'll so much <3. here's a lil something for all the squad who never got the billy hargrove redemption ark they wanted. set between season two and three :)

Max squeezed her eyes shut and gripped her comic in her hands so tightly her knuckles turned white. She flinched every time she heard the sounds come out of his mouth. The grunts. The muffled sounds of agony. Sometimes, even, the screams. Every time she heard Neil say something she stuffed her fingers in her ears or hid under her duvet. She didn’t want to hear what he was saying. It was always horrible. Still though, it could never be as bad as hearing what came after. Long after Billy’s muffled groans of pain, Neil’s terrifying words and the collision of belt or hands on skin or bodies on walls, there was always something worse. 

She figured he must not think she can hear. There’s no way he would not try and muffle it if he thought she could hear. She knew Neil couldn’t hear, his room was down the other end of the house, plus it wasn’t like he was home very often after he and Billy had fought. He usually had to ‘go and get some air.’ Max’s mother… Max loved her. But sometimes, she wished she could stand up for herself and her kids. Was it selfish, Max wondered, to wish that? She knew her mother couldn’t control Neil. But she could control her own life, and every time she heard what came after Neil and Billy’s fights she wished with all her might that Susan would take control. But she never did. She never could. 

Their fight was over. She heard Neil storming out the door and slamming it behind him. Susan was out late at a work dinner. Max opened her eyes, and realised, her hands shaking, that her comic was completely crumpled, stuffed into one hand. 

Maybe he’d be okay tonight. Maybe she wouldn’t hear, and maybe she could pretend she thought he was okay.  
He wasn’t. She heard. She heard the agonising sound she dreaded hearing.  
In the next room, Billy began to sob.  
Each cry pierced her ears and stung her eyes, and she could only envision every sob wracking his body with shivers as she heard him gasp between them. She wished she couldn’t hear. But she could. She always did. 

She pressed her head back against the wall behind her bed, her eyes shut, trying not to start crying herself. She knew in her heart, that Billy wasn’t a bad person. She knew what lead him to do the things she did, and she only just realised, this summer, and explained to her friends, that Billy had never hurt Lucas because of what he thought- he had done it to protect her. Because of what Neil thought. But he was Billy, and he’d been raised without love- he didn’t know how to help her and her friends in any other way but to threaten and hurt them. She had explained this to them of course, and they got it. They were her best friends. It had taken her a long time to open up to them about what went on in her house. Hopper had tried to help, but there wasn’t any evidence except Max’s word, because Billy refused to testify. He couldn’t. She was mad, for a while, then just sad. 

Max screwed up her eyes, still hearing Billy’s wounded sobs in the room next to her. Billy deserved love. She knew he did. But she also knew he didn’t know how to give it. Did he know how to receive it? Would he know how, if she went to him now? Because right this very second, that was all she wanted to do. Did she risk it? 

Her and Billy’s relationship had developed so much since the end of her school year and everything that happened with her friends. It was the start of summer now, school was out, and they didn’t see each other a whole lot, both staying out of the house as much as possible. And despite it still being rocky between them, the little things changed… a lot. He offered to drive her to meet with her friends, he managed to choke out an explanation to her friends, a short, disguised one, but one nonetheless. He had made peace with Steve (as much as he could muster) and when he got mad at her, when he yelled at her or spat at her, he nearly always nodded an apology later over dinner. Their nods had become a thing. They had become code between them; there wasn’t enough between them to hug or speak, but god, there was enough to nod. A nod could mean anything at this point. It could ask, “Are you okay?” after a fight. It could say something as simple as “I’ll take you to the mall,” or “Have fun.” It could mean something more. “I know you were with Lucas, don’t worry.” Or, even, “I promise, it will be okay.” 

Neither of them could admit it to themselves or anyone else, but Max and Billy had begun to look after each other. Something had changed in their dynamic very quickly, and Max didn’t know what it was, but it had. They cared about each other. She knew he’d taken the fall for her before when she’d been out. He’d never once mentioned Lucas. Something had changed, and they both knew it, they were both proud of it, and they could now, internally, both call each other family. 

And that’s what made Max get up off her bed, open her bedroom door, and knock gently on Billy’s that night.  
There was no reply, but a stifled choke.  
“Billy?” She whispered.  
“Fuck off, Max,” he replied a second later, but his voice was shaking. She couldn’t leave him. She had no idea what state he was in.  
She opened his door, and she had never felt a bigger pain shoot through her chest than seeing the person she now considered her brother lying on the floor, his eyes red rimmed with tracks down his cheeks, and a broken shelf behind him, the side of his head bleeding and the side of his face clearly stinging. His arm lay across his stomach, clearly sore, and his whole body was shaking. He sat up quickly. 

“I told you to fuck off, Maxine,” he said, but he had no conviction in his voice. He didn’t yell it, or growl it, and his eyes flashed no hatred. They spoke brokenness and pain, and all his voice did was shake quietly. Max stepped towards him, then knelt on the ground beside him. He flinched, ever so slightly, as she reached out gently to touch his face where he had been hit. It was a small flinch but she saw it, and he knew she had. He tried to move away from her, he tried to be angry. But all he mustered was standing up, swaying slightly, and sitting back down, leaning on his bed. He looked at her. 

She moved closer to him again, cautiously.  
“I know you don’t want me to see you like this,” she whispered.  
His fists squeezed together, but he said nothing.  
“Just let me help you,” she said. “Please.”  
He shut his eyes for a second, then opened them. The tear tracks on his face etched sorrow and anger, but he said nothing again. He just looked at her. Then he spoke.  
“You’re not supposed to- I’m the one who’s supposed to look after you,” he murmured.  
She nodded. “But as it happens,” she said quietly, standing up and grabbing his life guard’s first aid kit from his bathroom shelf, “I don’t need you to right now.”  
“It’s not like I ever do anyway,” he whispered in grief. Max stopped going through the kit for simply a fraction of a second, shocked at his honesty, then continued to get out what she needed.  
“Shut up,” she said quietly, dabbing at his head wound gently. “You know you’ve taken the fall for me a hundred times.”  
“But I’ve done… such bad things… Max…” his voice was drifting, but she knew he knew what he was saying.  
“Don’t think about that right now,” she whispered, cleaning her cloth and cutting a bandage. “Just relax.” 

The two of them lay there, on the floor, and Max tended to Billy as a mother would tend to her child, and Billy, for the first time since he had lost his mother, began to learn how to receive love and kindness. Both Max and Billy stayed quiet throughout the process of her fixing him, but both of them knew that the other knew that for the first time, Billy felt calm and cared for inside. For the first time in too long. 

They hadn’t talked after Max had told him to relax, but a while later she finished her task and the two sat there for a minute. Then Max, her eyes stinging suddenly as she stared at her exhausted older brother on the ground, stood up, putting away the first aid supplies and moving to the door. As she turned to say something, Billy looked up at her. And he nodded. He couldn’t muster anything more, but she understood. She nodded back, and closed the door. 

A thousand conversations had been exchanged in the nod they shared that night, more than they had ever had. The nod meant thank you, I’m here, I’m sorry, I’m sorry for everything, It’s okay.  
Maybe it had even meant I love you. You’re my sister, you’re my brother. Neither of them could ever say or would ever say. But it was there. It was clear. And Billy and Max had survived another day.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!  
i'm on tumblr too, come cry with me over fiction! @miss-mysticfalls


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